Issac J. Bailey | Public scrutiny is not personal

The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce created positive headlines this week, though not in a way most outside observers expected.

Its president, Brad Dean, donated one of his kidneys to 67-year-old Sue Gommer of Holly Springs, a former nurse who for decades suffered from genetic kidney disease.

He did it simply because he thought it was the right thing to do.

Such a decision is neither easy nor simple. Every invasive surgery comes with risks, and the recuperation process affects family life.

Dean is a husband and father of two.

And his decision marks the beginning of a new era for kidney transplants in our region of the world, one that may help reduce the number of people who have to wait years for donations such as Dean’s.

The surgery was highlighted in a front-page story in this newspaper on Monday – one day after the latest story highlighting the chamber’s failure to clearly separate the use of public from private expenditures also made front-page news.

Both stories are important. One tells of the personal side of some of our most influential local leaders, one that their harshest critics sometimes forget or overlook in their quest to demonize.

That’s always been an unfortunate side effect of living in a country where free speech is cherished, because not everyone uses it constructively.

Hopefully more of us will follow Dean’s lead concerning organ donation. Thousands of people throughout the country have been doing the same for quite some time without any headlines.

But recognizing the personal side of our leaders does not mean they shouldn’t be questioned consistently about how they handle the public’s business and money, even when they do something noble in their private lives.

And while some critics of area leaders have forgotten that they are speaking about living, breathing, complex human beings, I’ve gotten the feeling that some chamber and Myrtle Beach officials have forgotten that not every pointed question or relentless inquiry is a personal attack.

I know that’s how some have taken some of this paper’s in-depth reporting on how the chamber has been spending public money raised through a 1 percent sales tax in Myrtle Beach.

That’s precisely what Myrtle Beach City Councilman Randal Wallace told me early last month.

I wanted to know if Wallace had any questions about anything the chamber had done – anything – including its handling of $300,000 it gave to Coastal Uncorked then got it back without reporting it properly, and the chamber’s explanation that it spent the money on advertising for which the dates simply don’t seem to add up. That raised questions about the validity of the accountability reports the chamber had been issuing to City Council and led to the push to make it clearer just how the agency was using public dollars – something that should have occurred long ago.

“If you pick stuff apart, you can find all kinds of stuff,” Wallace said. “I assume that [Chamber officials] are honest people trying to do a good job. … Why are we making it sound like somebody has bought a Corvette and drove down the road?”

Inherent in that response seems to be the belief that good, honest people can’t sometimes screw up and undermine the trust that is vital for any public official to maintain. It also implies that the chamber has been unfairly attacked when all it has been asked to do is be accountable.

Here are the facts the chamber and its supporters must remember:

There has been public consternation about the 1 percent sales tax implemented since the moment it was announced a few years ago to raise funds to market the area. The chamber has received about $7 million of those dollars this year.

Chamber, local and state officials undermined their own credibility with the way they raised and dispersed fundraising dollars during a hotly-contested election cycle. Having the chamber president pass out thousands of dollars of campaign contributions was ill advised at best – and it looked even worse when it was revealed many of the companies from which the funds were collected seemed to have been created solely for that purpose.

It confirmed people’s worst suspicions about how behind-closed-door politics really work along the Grand Strand. The image of Dean handing out envelopes full of cashier’s checks to state and local politicians has not faded from the public’s collective mind and is when prolonged criticism of the chamber began.

And even a generous interpretation of the chamber’s decision to give $300,000 to Coastal Uncorked, then have it returned without properly marking the exchanges in the accountability reports, can’t wipe away the questions those actions raised.

I respect Dean and Wallace and just about every other chamber and Myrtle Beach official who have been scrutinized.

I also agreed with the implementation of the 1 percent sales tax without a voter referendum. Elected officials are supposed to make tough decisions they have reason to believe will benefit the area, even when such decisions are unpopular. From a practical standpoint, it simply made sense to keep the advertising dollars to market this area flowing while the state and other areas were pulling back. I don’t doubt that marketing is one of the reasons our tourism economy fared better than expected over the past couple of years (though I don’t buy the overly-rosy numbers chamber defenders use.)

But legitimate questions remain.

When an agency takes in millions of taxpayer dollars, the public wants to know how that money is being spent and just how effective that spending has been in achieving its goals.

And it wants that accounting to be transparent. Given the questions upfront, the chamber long ago should have been issuing clear reports separating how it spends taxpayer money versus the expenditures that rely upon private dollars, not waiting until sometime next year to make that change.

It’s not a personal attack to point that out.

It is possible to separate the public from the private – just as it is to recognize Dean’s gift to medicine and still want to question him and other officials about how the chamber is spending public money.